‘İkmen.’
‘Inspector, it’s Orhan,’ a rather breathless voice informed him.
İkmen frowned. ‘Is there a problem?’
‘I’m afraid Samsun Bajraktar has been admitted to hospital with stab wounds.’
The guilt washed across İkmen’s mind like a tidal wave. It had to be the Vloras. One day, he had always known, his job would damage a member of his family. Now it had happened.
‘How is he?’ İkmen said as he nervously lit a new cigarette off the butt of his old one. ‘And where?’
‘Well, the good news is that he is conscious. A Zabita officer actually witnessed the end of the attack . . .’
‘Where did it happen?’
‘Near the Kapalı Çarşı, I don’t know where exactly.’
‘Did the Zabita manage to apprehend the assailant?’
Halil moved over to his brother. ‘What is it? What—’
A sternly upheld hand cut him off and Halil watched in silence as Çetin’s face registered what seemed to be further bad news.
‘No, he didn’t,’ Orhan Tepe answered, ‘although apparently he thinks he can give us a reasonable description of the man.’
‘Good.’ İkmen would have liked to ask at this point whether the description fitted Mehmet Vlora but he moved on to what was really the more important issue right now. ‘So where is Samsun, Orhan?’
‘He was taken to the Cerrahpaşa,’ Tepe said, naming, to İkmen’s relief, the excellent teaching hospital that, as luck would have it, happened to be the nearest medical facility to the site of the incident.
‘I’ll get over there right away,’ İkmen said, rising to his feet.
‘I should imagine that he’s probably receiving treatment now, sir.’
‘Well, I’m going anyway,’ İkmen replied. ‘As well as being a crime victim, he is also my cousin.’
Halil’s eyes widened and he mugged furiously at his brother in order to elicit more information. Çetin turned away, intent upon the telephone call.
‘Is anybody with him at the Cerrahpaşa?’
‘Only the Zabita at the moment, although I have sent one of the uniforms, Roditi, over there to relieve him. I’ve asked him to send the Zabita back here so that I can take a statement.’
‘Good. I’d better get moving myself now.’
‘Are you at home, sir?’
‘No,’ İkmen replied with a sigh, anticipating the not inconsiderable journey to the hospital, which was across the Golden Horn in Aksaray. ‘No, I have to come from Emirgan. I’m at the home of my brother.’
‘Oh.’
‘But if I leave now, it shouldn’t take me too long.’
‘OK.’
‘I will see you after I’ve been to the hospital, Orhan,’ he said and then added, if a little distractedly, ‘Oh, and thank you for what you’ve done. I don’t know why you’re working so late but—’
‘I’ll see you later then, sir,’ his inferior cut in.
‘Yes.’ And with that İkmen pressed the end button and shoved the telephone back into the pocket of his coat.
‘So what is it?’ his wide-eyed brother asked as he followed Çetin to the door. ‘What has happened?’
‘Our cousin Samsun Bajraktar has been attacked,’ Çetin said as he stepped into the wide hall at the centre of his brother’s house. ‘And it’s all my fault.’
‘But . . .’
Çetin strode out through the front door and into the coldness of the night. As Halil stared after him, his heartbeat loud with anxiety, he could not help noting that it had been many years since he had seen his brother actually run.
High heels and fish-tail skirt notwithstanding, Samsun Bajraktar was still a sizeable and muscular prospect to take on in a fight. The assailant had been much smaller than Samsun and even the element of surprise would not have given him much advantage. The knife had sliced quite deeply into Samsun’s buttocks but the fact that the transsexual was not dead was largely a tribute to her greater size and power. Once her wounds had been stitched, Samsun did not, of course, allow this opportunity for high drama to pass her by.
‘The blood loss was so great,’ she said as İkmen pulled a chair up to her bed and sat down, ‘that I simply fainted into the arms of that Zabita.’
‘That must have been an interesting experience for him,’ replied İkmen, who had now met the man and knew him to be young and attractive.
Dr Alptekin, who had treated Samsun less than an hour before, smiled.
‘Actually,’ he said, ‘your blood loss was not really that great. You didn’t need a transfusion. But then,’ he added kindly, ‘we all know that that stuff really spreads, don’t we?’
‘Oh, absolutely,’ İkmen agreed. ‘Just a spoonful of blood can look like an ocean.’
‘I’ll leave you alone now,’ a still smiling Alptekin said as he left, closing the door behind him. The noise of the heaving hospital outside abated.
‘He’s downplaying it,’ Samsun explained as soon as the doctor had gone.
İkmen smiled. ‘Probably for the best,’ he said and then, sighing deeply, changed tack to more serious matters.
‘So, was it Mehmet Vlora who attacked you?’
‘Oh, I couldn’t possibly answer that, Çetin,’ Samsun said, looking intently at the white bowl that stood on the table beside her bed. ‘It all happened so quickly. I was out looking, like the stupid, besotted girl that I am, for that faithless bastard Abdurrahman—’
‘The Zabita officer,’ İkmen cut in before Samsun’s attempts at blinding him with superfluous details really took hold, ‘is at this moment giving one of my officers a very comprehensive description of the man involved.’
Samsun looked at İkmen sharply. ‘Oh?’
‘He got a very good view of everything,’ and then smiling into the lie he added, ‘including the man’s face.’
‘Oh.’
‘So if you do know who did this, you might as well tell me.’
Samsun, who with her hair scraped back harshly from her face looked more like a man than usual, distracted herself by playing with what was left of her chipped nail polish.
‘Samsun?’
She looked up from her fingers. ‘Yes?’
‘Look, if you’re worried about reprisals . . .’
‘Çetin, if the Zabita clearly saw who attacked me then I can’t really see why I need to add my observations to his. I mean, as an officer of the law—’
‘He needs all the help he can get,’ İkmen said. ‘They’re only market police, the Zabita. People view them as little more than glorified security men. Yes, they are observant and yes, they do have a good knowledge regarding thieves and dodgy dealers in their particular area. But they are not accustomed to serious acts of violence, a fact that will be known to any lawyer the assailant might engage.’
Samsun turned a shocked face towards her cousin. ‘You mean that the Zabita might not be believed? That my attacker might get away with it?’
‘It’s possible.’
‘Oh, well then,’ she said and painfully pushed herself up a little straighter against the pillows, ‘if that happened, I’d have to sort it out myself, wouldn’t I?’
‘Reverting, no doubt,’ İkmen said as casually as he could, ‘to the laws laid down by Lek Dukagjini.’
‘Well, yes, I—’
‘So your attacker was Albanian then,’ İkmen said through a glaze of barely concealed triumph.
Samsun, her eyes once again rooted to her nails, spat the word ‘Bastard!’ at him before returning her now hostile attention back to his face.
İkmen smiled. ‘If your description matched that given by the Zabita, it would be very helpful. That sort of evidence, where people observe similar clothes, colouring, height, is very compelling.’
‘So I don’t actually have to give a name.’
‘Oh, no.’ İkmen smiled again as he slowly reached into his pocket for his notebook and pen. ‘Just an outline of what the man looked like to you.’
‘And I don’t have to talk about his nationality either?’ Samsun said, her voice now wavering both from the effects of the painkilling drugs she had been given and from the strain of this delicately oblique conversation.
‘No,’ İkmen replied. ‘Just tell me
exactly
what he looked like and what he was wearing.’
As if pulled by invisible cords, Samsun’s eyes turned quickly towards the door of her room, her features exhibiting some nervousness about what might be beyond it.
‘I won’t let anything happen to you, you know,’ İkmen said. ‘One of my men is going to be outside that door until you leave this hospital.’
‘And then?’ Actively she searched his face for reassurance.
‘By that time the culprit should be in my cells and his family under close observation.’
‘Do you mean it, Çetin? I mean, you’re not just saying this to—’
‘I give you my word,’ İkmen said, his face now serious. ‘As your cousin as well as an officer of the law, I guarantee that nothing bad will happen to you.’ Briefly, he took one of her hands in his, an action that made her slowly smile.
‘Oh, well,’ she said after a pause, ‘I suppose I can give a description . . .’
‘Good girl!’ İkmen enthused. He opened his notebook. ‘So?’
‘Well,’ Samsun began.
Although attending to every word she said, some of which quite surprised him, at least half of İkmen’s mind wondered how on earth he was going to deliver on his promise to protect Samsun from harm. After all, it wasn’t as if she was inconspicuous – and that was apart from the problem of how he’d ever find enough manpower to stake out the home of her attacker. But then he consoled himself with the notion that as a Turk he should really trust to the fickle arms of kismet; the fact that he didn’t actually believe in fate was, he decided, of no importance.
Chapter 12
Dawn came late that day, as is its custom during the winter months. For Çetin İkmen the reduction in daylight hours was a blessing. For, as he stood outside the entrance to the Vloras’ Tahtakale Caddesi apartment, the pistol that only he knew was unloaded in his hand, he was grateful that the long hours of darkness had allowed him to deploy so many men around the building. Inside could be any number of people who might offer armed resistance to the police – something that he knew would not be affected by whether or not he smiled at the obviously nervous Orhan Tepe at his side, but he did it anyway. It cost him nothing and was worth the tense little grimace that he received in return. Then looking up at the two uniformed officers now holding the battering ram up against the flimsy door that young Yıldız had so recently kicked down, İkmen mouthed the word, ‘Go!’
In the confusion that followed, the sound of the splintering door and the officers’ announcement of their presence melded with the screams of the women and the noise of the Vlora men’s bare feet slapping against the floor. All this enveloped in an odour which İkmen instantly recognised as the sharp smell of cannabis.
‘Mmm,’ he said as his officers cleared a path for him through to what had earlier been identified as the sleeping quarters. ‘Drugs and violence.’ Then, looking up at Tepe, he added, ‘Whatever next, eh, Orhan?’
Smiling by way of reply, Tepe strode out ahead of İkmen, following the uniformed officers into the room.
They were all there with the exception of Aryan Vlora who some of the other officers were already talking to in the kitchen, along with the boys mother Angeliki.
Mehmet and Mehti were, or rather had been until the police had broken in, otherwise engaged. The woman in Mehti’s bed, with her white skin and ash-blonde hair, was of western European appearance, and the tiny dark creature cringing beside Mehmet was probably Albanian. Maybe she was his wife.
‘What do you mean breaking in here like this!’ Mehmet Vlora shouted as they entered. ‘We had you in here yesterday. Men in white coats, taking things away . . .’
‘Forensic, yes, about Rifat Berisha’s murder. They’re outside again now, waiting to come and do a bit more. I believe you were expecting them, though perhaps not quite yet if the smell of this place is anything to go by. But I haven’t come about that or indeed to talk to you, Mehmet. I’ve come to speak to Mehti,’ İkmen said with a smile in that man’s direction, ‘about a very unpleasant attack upon one Samsun Bajraktar. It happened yesterday evening.’
‘He was here with us!’ Mehmet growled, more to the large constable who now had one hand on his shoulder than to İkmen.
‘What’s going on?’ the blonde woman said in what İkmen immediately recognised as English.
‘It concerns a violent crime your boyfriend may have committed, miss,’ İkmen replied in English, ‘and also, now that I’m here, possession of cannabis.’
‘Well, it’s got nothing to do with me!’ the woman snapped back harshly, pulling a rather greasy looking sheet across her naked body. ‘And he isn’t my boyfriend if that’s what you think!’
İkmen, smiling, said, ‘That’s probably just as well then, isn’t it, miss?’ He turned to Mehti, speaking Turkish again. ‘Unfortunately for you, Mehti, the young Zabita officer who probably saved Samsun’s life gave a very good description of you, including,’ he tipped his head towards an emerald-green puffa jacket lying on the floor, ‘your clothes.’
‘But—’
‘I want the whole lot of them brought down to the station,’ İkmen said, addressing his team.
‘Get dressed,’ Tepe ordered the two Albanian men.
Silent and now seemingly afraid, Mehmet and Mehti began to put on their trousers, socks and shirts, whilst quietly urging their women to do likewise. Although the English-speaking girl was still obviously outraged, she complied without further comment.
As he made his way back into the hall, İkmen reminded his officers that Mehti Vlora’s clothes would be needed for forensic analysis and that that gentleman should be encouraged to take spare garments with him for what could be a rather long stay in the cells. Once out in the hall, however, İkmen’s earlier arrogant bonhomie faded under the searing glare of an old woman’s infuriated eyes.
‘You pig!’ Angeliki Vlora spat at him as she struggled to free her clawed fingers from the restraining arms of a thickset constable.
‘We found cocaine on this one,’ the constable said.